With the advent of wireless telecommunications networks, mobile telephones, personal digital assistants, a variety of pagers and instant messaging devices have been developed and are widely used. Users of such mobile telecommunications devices commonly subscribe to the services of host service providers for a wide variety of services and applications. For example, a host service provider may provide electronic mail services, instant messaging services, and a range of information and data, including business information, educational information, sports information, weather information, and the like.
The mobile nature of such mobile telecommunications devices creates a difficult network and services management situation for operators of wireless telecommunications services and for host service providers. One particular problem is the density of mobile devices in any given area. For example, hundreds or thousands of users of personal digital assistants may crowd into a single building or city block, such as Wall Street, and request the services of a host service provider in the business of providing stock quotes. On the other hand, a small number of mobile device users may be located in a wide rural area requesting the same services. Because the host service provider has no knowledge of the locations of individual mobile device users, the service provider has difficulty determining the proper utilization of telecommunications services for providing services to the various users.
The service provider may rely on general anectodotal information as to the general density of subscribers in a given area, but due to the mobile nature of such devices, the service provider has very little real time information. If hundreds of mobile subscribers flood into an area in which the service provider typically only provides services to a small number of subscribers, the telecommunications system in that area may be overburdened, and the services provider will have no knowledge or information that the problem has occurred.
A secondary problem associated with the service provider's lack of knowledge as to the location of wireless subscribers is an inability for service providers to transmit advertising or other helpful information to subscribers based on commercial and other services available in the area in which the mobile subscribers are currently located.
These problems are exacerbated by the data handling capacity of wireless telecommunications systems. Typically, a host service provider which may be a wireless service provider, an application service provider, an Internet service provider, and the like, is connected to a mobile telecommunications switch through a high capacity and high speed data link. On the other hand, the mobile switch may be connected to a cellular telecommunications site (antenna) through a significantly lower capacity data link, and ultimately information is passed from the antenna to the wireless subscriber via an over-the-air radio link that has significantly less capacity for transmitting data to the wireless subscriber. Under such conditions, data sent from a host subscriber typically must be buffered at the wireless switch and then transmitted over the radio link to the wireless subscriber according to the capacity of the radio link. In circumstances where the density of wireless subscribers in a given area becomes very high, as described above, data buffers become overburdened and wireless telecommunications services often fail. Service providers often deal with these problems by attempting to create efficiently sized software applications, and by setting up guidelines for minimizing the flooding of data buffers and wireless switches.
Prior methods have been utilized to provide location information of mobile device users. For example, global positioning satellites may be used to provide a very precise location of a given mobile device. However, the mobile device must include an expensive GPS receiver, and often GPS systems may not work properly in certain areas, such as in shadowed areas behind buildings and other structures. Other methods have used information provided to mobile 911 services, but these methods suffer from the obvious danger of overloading systems set in place for emergency operations. Other systems have used triangulation based on signals from the mobile device, but such systems are energy inefficient and cause extensive mobile device battery use.
Still other systems have provided service providers with location information on a mobile device as a user-initiated system. That is, according to some systems, the user of the mobile device may enter a location indicator, such as a zip code or address, and that information is inserted into a software application resident on the mobile device. The information is, in turn, transmitted to the service provider through the mobile telecommunications system. The problem for such a user-initiated system is that the user must take the time and effort to insert the location information, and for any user who fails to insert location information, that user's location will remain unknown to the service provider.
Accordingly, there is a need for a method and system for efficiently providing service providers with location information of mobile subscribers so that the service provider may determine the density of mobile users in a given area, and so that the service provider may send helpful information to subscribers on services and items of interest located in the area in which the mobile subscriber is operating.
It is with respect to these and other problems that the present invention has been made.